Why most of my therapy clients are wiser than all the pundits’ and psychologists’ printed words

(Article submitted to a journal which will bury it then expunge it from memory.)

I’m not a happy adult, but I am a joyous infant. I was also an unhappy, anxious and depressed child and teenager, but the infant remains permanent. I can feel him any time I’m not distracted by my present successes and failures. Absent the distractions, I feel something joyous at the molecular level. It may be only three or five or ten molecules, like the surface of a tiny lake, delicate and poignantly sweet, but it seems to be the foundation of my life. Now – if I tried to find what the arcane psychologists call cellular memory pre-birth, there would probably be a mess of trouble down there. I was born premature and kept in an incubator for a long time with no bond with anyone. So it’s probably the post-birth molecules I feel, let’s say, much of the time.

Examples: I take a tissue from the box and feel a split-second beautiful high and the subliminal thought: “I can have this! It’s free for the taking!” I walk outside the apartment door, down the walk to the dumpster, and feel the enchantment of the world. I grab a small Fiji water bottle: I feel like a prince sitting on a voluptuous cushion on a throne. A honey bee hovering around a bud: a sensation of love of nature. It goes even more quiddity than that. I pick up my wallet before leaving for work. “How am I so privileged?” is my chest sensation. My wife has bought me two different brands of fancy toothpaste. I feel blessed.

At different times, I have interpreted this phenomenon in a diametrically opposite way. By “interpreted” I mean that sometimes the joy feels sad. That is because the dark weight of my adult life pollutes it. But it really can’t be polluted. It’s always at the base and is frequently invoked by itself throughout the day. I know that on my death bed, which is not unlikely to be in poverty, the early toddler’s wonder and shock at the free gifts of life will be there.

I know, and I teach my clients this, that this positive core may exist but doesn’t exist for everyone. Look for it by quieting absolutely everything. They also learn that childhood pain and spirit-amputation become their more powerful foundation, above the earlier one. They learn that we are what we were, that positive thinking and forgiveness and grace and rationalization and religion and futile hope for an emotionally dead parent won’t change that foundation. They learn the difference between their façade, their persona and their fundamental self which is their alpha and omega.

I’m sure some of the psychotherapists and pundits have felt all this both before and after they’ve written their words. They probably chalk it up to indigestion or depression or an ignorable quirk. They write happy or hopeful, invariably. Cognitive and “spiritual” therapists and Arthur Brooks and David Brooks and Anne Lamott. They know, I suspect, that all of one’s experiences from pre-birth to now add up to an internal wash: meaninglessness. But for their readers, they are impelled to paint good and hopeful. What does this really mean? That the answer is to live and die in dogged and perpetual pink thought, which we must force. If we do that, we will never notice the joy of the infant, the eternal template.